Dictionaries

A book published in 1610 in Zurich - and recently found in Italy - includes a list of 100 Basque words translated to Latin. 

The book, written by Kaspar Waser, is a version of a previous work of 1555, whose subject is minority languages. Besides these 100 Basque words, the author talks about the “indomitable Bascon people”. 

Quoting Mintzoa Publishing - the current owners - spokeperson: 

“The most significant thing about these 100 words is that we still use them all nowadays: gorputza [body], bihotza [heart], arreba [sister, of a male speaker], aita [father], astoa [donkey], andrea [woman]… If we speak about any other language like Spanish, the one spoken in 1610 isn’t the same that’s spoken now, but we see that Euskara is. We talk about a territory invaded one hundred years prior [to this book] and about a language spoken by very few people, supposedly, and however this Swiss philosopher, theologist, physicist, and writer was very interested. Out of the 130 languages featured in his book, almost all of them are reserved about a page and a half; Euskara, conversely, six. […] 

“Even "tz” appears, when it was thought to have been created around 100 years ago to grammaticaly unify Euskara, and that before it, that sound was written “ç”. [This books proofs that] 410 years ago, it was written “tz"”.

“Basque wasn’t spoken by just 4 guys, and if it was, well, they made it to Switzerland.”

estar hecho polvo

fix und fertig sein; am Boden zerstört sein - wörtlich: zu Staub gemacht sein

Umgangssprachliche Redewendung, mit der man zum Ausdruck bringt, dass man insbesondere körperlich schwer angeschlagen ist. Wer es weniger martialisch ausdrücken mag, sagt lieber: estoy hecho añicos | ich bin zerschlagen, zersplittert, ein Scherbenhaufen.

~

Vorsicht: hecho polvo unbedingt mit h schreiben! Nur so ist das Partizip Perfekt abgeleitet vom Tätigkeitswort hacer - hecho. Es existiert nämlich auch das Tätigkeitswort echar | fortjagen, hinauswerfen. Dessen Partizip spricht sich genauso aus wie hecho. Und pikanter Weise existiert auch zu diesem Wort eine spanische Redewendung im Zusammenhang mit polvo | Staub:

Pronounciation of the Latin alphabet letter <U>

It’s pronounced [u] in most orthographies, but in French, Occitan, Azorean and inner-central European Portuguese, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic and Occitan, <u> represents [y]. In Afrikaans it also represents the more common [œ].

In Swedish, Norwegian, Somali, Faroese, Southern Sami, Ume Sami, Maori, Madeiran Portuguese and Californian English it’s central [ʉ]. 

In English it has a variety of values namely [ʌ] as in “cut”, [juː] as in “music” and [ʊ] as in “put”. Less commons values are: [ɪ] as in “busy” or [ɛ] as in “bury”.